


So I Drown It Out

by Disniq



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Sam/Eileen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e18 Despair, Selectively Mute Dean Winchester, Suicidal Thoughts, gay love can pierce through the veil of death and save the day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:35:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27532369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Disniq/pseuds/Disniq
Summary: Sam thinks Cas vanished with the others, dusted by Chuck. He- He doesn’t know, and Dean’s gonna have to tell him.Only, when he opens his mouth, every emotion he never let himself feel rushes up like vomit, clots in his lungs, bile in his mouth, thick and slimy and black--Dean snaps his jaw closed, clenches his teeth, swallows everything back down.His words are lost in the tide.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 20
Kudos: 356





	So I Drown It Out

_"So I Drown it out,_  
_Like I always do,_  
_Dancing through our house,_  
_With the Ghost of You."_

_Ghost of you, 5 Seconds of Summer_

By the time Sam finds him, Dean has cried himself catatonic.

It might have been minutes, might have been days. Dean’s limbs are a frozen sprawl where he fell, numb fingers still clutching his own head until Sam gently pries them away. Sam stretches them out slowly, one at a time, the painful tingling working up his arm and somewhere, gradually, Dean becomes aware of Sam’s voice too.

Nervous chatter, soothing nonsense, and none of it is sticking, but it’s _Sam_ and it drags him back to reality, the reality where Cas--

No.

Another sob tears its way up Dean’s dry throat, nothing more than air, but it shakes loose every regret in his hollow chest and he crumples back in on himself.

“Hey, hey,” Sam says, soft, but it’s useless. Nothing Sam says can ease the ache. All the hurt is on the inside, shredding his heart more effectively than Death herself. “C’mon, Dean, we need to move, we’ll get them back, we have to get them back--”

He doesn’t know.

Sam thinks Cas vanished with the others, dusted by Chuck. He- He doesn’t _know_ , and Dean’s gonna have to tell him.

Only, when he opens his mouth, every emotion he never let himself feel rushes up like vomit, clots in his lungs, bile in his mouth, thick and slimy and _black_ \--

Dean snaps his jaw closed, clenches his teeth, swallows everything back down.

His words are lost in the tide.

//

Somehow Sam navigates Dean’s uncooperative meatsack up to the library, where Jack and Michael are talking. Dean doesn’t know what about because the second he crosses the threshold they turn to him in creepy angel synchronisation.

Michael squints at him, _hmmm_ s and turns away.

Jack hurries over, damn near trips over himself to ask, “Cas, where--” before the penny drops and he freezes mid-step.

He meets Dean’s eyes, stares into his tattered soul for a long minute, and then his whole face crumples.

“I- I’m s-so sorry,” he says, words trembling like the rest of him, like every nerve in Dean’s body is trembling because _Jack knew_.

“Whoa, what-” Sam is saying but Dean can’t hear over the static in his head, suddenly. He’s moving before he knows where, why. Knows, vaguely, somewhere, that he should be angry, should be furious, but the black hole in his chest swallows that in on top of everything else.

//

Sam finds him in the kitchen, later. Sat on the floor with an empty six pack, staring blindly at the polished chrome.

“I,” he says, croaky and dry. He’s been crying too. Dean should comfort him, should make his baby brother feel better, but he can’t. Sam takes a breath, clears his throat, tries again. “Jack-- Jack told me. About Cas’ deal.”

Of course he did. Because Jack _knew_. Dean isn’t exactly in control of his expressions at the moment; whatever his face does, Sam sighs.

“Cas asked him not to tell us. It’s not Jack’s fault.”

No, it’s not. It’s _Dean’s_ fault.

It’s always been Dean’s fault, all of it, everything since Cas dragged him out of Hell, the whole fucking time they’ve known each other and he never--

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Sam says, gentle enough to wound. “Whatever made him happy. I am so fucking sorry.”

Dean’s tongue feels thick and stupid in his head, he can’t make his throat work. He shakes his head instead, presses a hand over his freshly burning eyes.

Sam pulls him in to a hug and Dean lets himself slump into it, and they shore each other up while the grief crashes over them.

//

He must fall asleep there, on the cold concrete, but he wakes in his room.

Sammy has pulled his boots off, left some water and Advil by the lamp.

Dean blinks groggily through his crusted eyelashes, decides it’s not worth the effort, curls his throbbing head back into his pillow. For a second, as his eyes slip shut, he thinks he catches a flash of tan on the chair in the corner.

Dean doesn’t look again.

There’s nothing there when he wakes a second time.

Of course there isn’t. The empty chair sits where it always does, mocking him.

Someone has left dinner outside the door. Dean steps over the sandwich. Takes the beer.

He stops by the library stash for the good bourbon, can see everybody sat around the map table, conspiring or some shit. Sam, looking exhausted and manic, is poring over old scrolls. Jack stares, red eyed and pale, at the heavy black death book; useless and unreadable.

They both look dead on their feet, worn down to their very bones. Still frantically searching for any kind of solution. Dean should help them, should take over while they rest. Should help everyone who got Thanos snapped away, all their friends and everyone they ever saved and all the lucky bastards they never met. But he can’t bring himself to care.

Cas is gone either way.

What does it matter if the world ends now.

//

Dean can’t bring himself to take off the jacket.

The shoulder, the _handprint_ , is dried and stiff. A grotesque echo of what he used to have. His eyes burn when he catches sight of it in the bathroom mirror, but he won’t take it off.

It’s all he has left.

In lieu of a shower, Dean splashes his face with cold water. Scrubs the dried salt from his cheeks.

When he straightens up, there’s a flash of otherworldly blue eyes in the mirror, and he twists so quickly he falls into the sink but it’s gone, he’s gone, there’s nothing--

“Dean?”

Dean damn near rips the door from it’s hinges, but it’s not Cas, obviously it’s not Cas, because Cas is--

“Uh,” Adam says. “Sorry to, uh. Interrupt?”

Dean casts a look up and down the corridor, but still nothing. Furious with himself, Dean pushes past Adam. He’s got a fifth stashed in his room and the sudden desire to be black out drunk.

“Dean.”

That’s Adam’s voice, higher and lighter than Mike, but the hand that grabs Dean’s wrist is steeled with archangel power. The fuckers are double-teaming him even in one body.

“Sam is worried about you,” Adam says. He almost sounds genuine, but he also doesn’t loosen their grip. “He lost people too.”

Dean wrenches his arm, and Michael lets him fly backwards, crack his elbow against the tile. Dean scowls up at them.

“He can’t save the world _and_ baby you,” Michael snaps. “And the world can still be fixed.”

“No, that’s not,” Adam starts, holds a hand out to help Dean up.

But Michael is right. Dean is beyond fixing.

He pushes the hand away, gets to his feet on his own. Grabs his bedroom JD, and drags his sorry ass back to the library.

//

Michael doesn’t have a plan, but he wants to help, he says. He had a few ideas, he says, avenues to explore.

Dean doesn’t know what those avenues are, and he doesn’t much care. But Sam does, so Dean sits at the back with his bottle of single malt and pretends to listen.

The chrome edge of the map table flickers blue, like a tie blowing in a breeze. Dean stares directly at it, swigs his drink and absolutely does _not_ look where the reflection is coming from.

//

Dean drags himself from his bed every day, pretends he doesn’t imagine the swish of a trenchcoat as he wakes.

He splashes water on his face, doesn’t meet the blue eyes in the mirror.

He grabs his first beer, swallows a handful of cereal with it when Jack is watching, and tracks the reflection of dark, rumbled hair across the chrome counters.

Dean’s voice remains stubbornly stuck in his throat, a solid mass he can barely breathe around. He can’t comprehend words, can’t process thoughts.

He slides silently into the seat next to Sammy, his physical presence the only support he can offer.

//

He cries when he finally removes the jacket. He shouldn’t have any tears left in him, anymore, but they dredge themselves up from his very soul and drip onto the red-brown handprint.

Dean goes to wipe them away, but he stops short. That spot is the last earthly remains of Cas, the last tangible proof Dean has that the angel touched his life.

It’s Dean’s fault he’s gone.

Cas turned away from Heaven for him. Fell for him, and then _fell for him_ and Dean is such a fucked up pile of issues that he’s been gone on Cas for years and he pushed it aside again and again and Cas fucking _died_ thinking--

Dean always thought they’d address it later, when things settled down and the world stopped ending and… he screwed it up so badly that Cas didn’t even think there was a _later_ to live for.

Dean is poison, the very touch of him corrupts. Dean won’t sully the last imprint for Cas he has left, fuck.

He folds the fabric carefully, avoiding the handprint. Places the coat gently on the bed, on the second pillow that Dean never uses because it wasn’t for him it was for--

Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

Dean reaches for his Blue Label, registers movement by the door and twists to block the jacket from view when Sam barges in, but the door is still closed tight.

It’s not Sam.

It’s stood by Dean’s desk, wispy and transparent. _It_ , not _him_ , because it’s not him.

It’s pale, grey and white and sepia. Washed of colour except for the eyes, the exact shade of blue. It smiles at him, wide and gummy and damp, just like the last time he looked at Dean and it’s too much, he can’t, it’s not--

Dean squeezes his eyes shut tight for a count of 10 and when he opens them, it’s gone.

//

Dean runs for the armoury without stopping to put his shoes on. The cold of the floor seeps through his socks, and he’s moving so fact he practically skids across the library, nearly knocks Jack flying but he doesn’t stop, can’t stop if maybe, just maybe--

“Dean?!” Jack yelps, jumps out of the way. “Uh, Sam?”

“What the hell, Dean?!” Sam hollers from one of the archive rooms, but Dean is already pulling out drawers at random. They keep two in the car, but there’s a couple spare ones stashed up here somewhere and this was closer than the garage and time is of the essence here and-- Ah! There!

“EMF?” Sam says, over Dean’s shoulder. “What’s going on, Dean? Why do you--”

Dean doesn’t wait for him to finish. He ducks around Sammy’s worried eyebrows, pegs it back to his room. The thing isn’t there anymore, or not visible at least, but if it’s really there and it’s really him then they can rig up another spell, cook him a new body, and--

He flicks the switch. The lights stay stubbornly unresponsive. Not even a flicker. 

It’s not a ghost.

//

Not a ghost, or a remnant, or a poltergeist. But the- the Spectre keeps showing up.

It doesn’t speak, doesn’t do anything. Just wanders the rooms, lurks in corners and watches them.

When Sam tells Dean Michael found a new lead over the breakfast table and doesn’t mention the Castiel shaped wisp sitting on the bench, Dean figures Sam can’t see it.

Even Jack, with all his worldly powers recovering and rebalancing, can’t sense it.

Which means Dean might have really, truly lost his mind.

Dean’s hallucinated Cas before. After purgatory, when the Mark was at it’s worst. It didn’t happen so often back then, wasn’t as clear or as persistent as whatever this is. Maybe Dean is officially certifiable.

Sam thinks so.

He doesn’t say it to Dean’s face, of course, but Dean overhears him talking to Jack,“-- selective mutism, it’s a trauma response--” and, “--therapy, maybe? I’ll email Mia, she owes us one, she could--”.

Dean might have finally fucking cracked, but he ain’t going to whine about it in some diary for his shapeshifting shrink.

He’s gonna ignore the dead elephant in the room, he’s gonna swallow down whatever tasteless food they shove at him, and then he’s gonna drink until his brain is as floaty and numb as his body is.

He hasn’t got there yet.

//

In the weeks of fruitless research - three damaged brothers, an archangel and a half-human three year old; the only people left on Earth - the shade becomes weirdly comforting.

Dean can’t look at it head on without triggering that burning sensation behind his eyelids, but it’s the first thing he looks for in any given room. The flickers of grey-tan-blue in his peripheral make his heart clench, and it’s the closest Dean feels to being alive anymore.

Sam occasionally asks Dean to drive them places - the library, a few museums, sometime a university archive. Mike could zap them all there in seconds, but Sam looks earnest and sad when he asks so Dean obliges.

Dean never sees the spectre outside of the bunker.

He starts leaving the impala’s keys in the war room and locking his bedroom door.

//

Nothing feels real.

Time means nothing without daylight and routine, the date is lost with nobody on Earth to keep track.

They are toys, they are puppets.

Dean is broken, splintered and hollow.

He takes his knife to his skin sometimes, just to remember he is flesh and bone and blood.

The shade frowns sadly at him whenever he adds a new line to the tally.

//

Dean sleeps fitfully, wakes exhausted. Rattles uselessly around the bunker in between.

His dreams are a greyscale rerun, _Dean Winchester this is your life_ in black and black and _black_

Blood, exploding across a graveyard; Goo, leaking from ears and eyes and mouth; River water, rushing in his ears and dripping from a battered, empty trenchcoat.

Wings, burned onto white sand, burned into the universe, burned into Dean’s heart, his soul, his very _being_ \--

The words- _those words_ \-- carved into him deeper than anything else ever has been, washed away before his eyes in a wave of existential, cosmic nothingness.

If his dreams are black and empty, his waking hours are too blue, too full.

The spectre is there almost constantly.

//

In the end, they don’t even need a plan.

Chuck appears in the library one day, eyes black and smoking, smiling serenely.

“Michael,” he says, voice echoing and lilted like a cassette recorded over too many times. “Long time no see.”

“Father,” Michael greets, stiffly. Then, “Amara.”

Chuck smiles, more vibrant than Dean has ever seen him look, and his whole visage flickers and then it’s Amara standing by the stove.

“What the fuck,” Sam says. “is happening.”

Amara smiles again, beautific and ethereal.

“Balance.”

They flicker again, Amara to Chuck and back again. They snap their fingers, and vanish.

Three seconds later, every phone in the bunker starts ringing.

//

Everyone on Earth is back.

Charlie and Stevie, Jody and Donna and the girls. Bobby and Garth and all the AU hunters.

Sam handles the phones for twenty minutes before the bunker door slams open and Eileen bolts down the stairs and into his arms and they’re both crying and smiling at the same time, absolutely grinning at each other and Dean just _can’t_.

He ends up in the dungeon. Sits on the floor in front of the wall that became a doorway. It’s cold concrete now, smooth and unblemished.

Long after his legs go numb, he sits there. Nobody comes looking, wrapped up in their victory.

Theirs, not Dean’s. His win was always one thing.

Dean doesn’t know why he’s here. Except… some small, cursed hope, maybe, because everyone came back in the exact spot they vanished, and Cas--

But Cas wasn’t vanished. Cas wasn’t _on Earth_.

That last, stubborn, tiny sliver of hope dies bloody.

Cas isn’t coming back.

//

When it all boils over, Dean is alone.

Michael borrows Jack for some heavenly renovations, and Sam wants to drive Eileen home. He asks a dozen times, is Dean sure he’ll be okay. Dean knows he can’t look good, weeks of broken sleep and an almost exclusively liquid diet have left him drawn and thin, but he tries to smile.

Sam deserves some happiness after everything, and Eileen can give him that.

Once they’ve gone, Dean takes two bottles of the nicer bourbon from the liquor cabinet, slumps to the floor right there to drink it.

He’s buzzed enough to feel vaguely blurry before he pulls out his pocketknife.

He presses the point with his thumb. Tracks the blood drop slide down the blade.

It’s sharp. He could stab himself in the neck and it’d be over in seconds.

The shade flickers to his left, nobody is here so Dean lets himself look at the decorative buttons on the backrest through the thing’s chest. If he lets his eyes unfocus, the faded blue tie almost blends into the worn brown leather.

When he steels himself to look up, it looks sad again, eyebrows bunched, lips turned down. The bluest eyes Dean has ever known stare into the cavern of his chest, burn him to his core.

Maybe it’s that his blood alcohol finally reached terminal velocity, maybe it’s the fact that Cas, the real Cas, alive and whole and _in fucking love with him_ , sat here months ago and talked about destiny and hope and--

The thing tilts it’s head, so so familiar, and something in Dean snaps and his voice is suddenly echoing around the library.

“You selfish fuck!” he yells, and his voice cracks and he doesn’t care because nobody is gonna hear him anyway. “How _dare_ you--”

Dean takes a rattling breath, digs deep into that rage. He’s been hollow for so long that it’s euphoric to feel _anything,_ even this roiling fury.

“We had a- a- an agreement, a _contract_! We weren’t supposed to TALK ABOUT IT! Not yet, not-- We were supposed to wait! Until _after_ , until we were _done_ with saving the world! It was supposed to be the _ending_ , th- the Happy Ever After!”

Dean is crying again, his voice is ragged and aching.

“You weren’t supposed to-- be _gone!”_

Silvery tears well on the shades transparent face, gather around the piercing blue eyes.

“Well _FUCK YOU_ ,” Dean spits, hurls the bottle at the things feet, shattering glass like a bullet, echoing across the walls. “Fuck you, Cas! You took that from us, made it- made it the end before we even got the beginning! And I never got to say-- I swallowed it down so many times because it was _right_ , wasn’t _time_ , and I never told you I fucking love you, you asshole!”

Dean falls to the floor too, shards of glass cutting into his knees. He feels lighter, deflated. Empty.

“And you died and now I never get to say it,” Dean sobs. “I love you, I fucking _love you.”_

The room is too bright through his tears, to intense. But he closes them and it does fade, the room is actually glowing, shining bright as the fucking sun, or the white-out light of raw grace and Dean clamps a hand over his face on pure instinct.

When it fades, he daren’t look. His eyelids burn bright afterglow red, and before he can focus on anything, something touches his face. Soft and gentle, big hands cup his jaw on either side of his face and he can’t look, he can’t-

“Hello, Dean.”

// **_**Epilogue**_** //

Sam is late home. He doesn’t mean to be, with Dean haunting the bunker like a wraith, but he couldn’t let Eileen out of his sight until he was sure she was okay.

She kicked him out, in the end, with a smile and a quick flash of her fingers, _Don’t be clingy_.

Sam makes no promises, but he really does need to check on his brother. Dean has been a shell of himself since, well. He never did cope well when Cas was gone.

He’s surprised, then, when he steps into the bunker and can smell pancakes and bacon and… honey, maybe? Dean’s barely eaten anything for weeks, let alone _cooked_.

The change is more worrying for being so unexpected. Sam can deal with Dean’s drinking, his hopelessness. He doesn’t know what to do with… _this._

He’s even more floored when he rounds the kitchen door to find Dean is smiling, and he’s smiling because he’s looking right at-

“Cas?!”

“Sam,” Cas says, like he wasn’t fucking dead four hours ago.

“Sammy!” Dean says, shoves a plate at him. “Pancakes! Eat!” And he’s still too thin, skin too pale, dark circles too deep around his eyes, but he’s also somehow _glowing_.

Sam does not miss the way Dean clings to Cas’ hand, the way they move around the kitchen pressed shoulder to shoulder. He smiles to himself. _About time._

“What happened?” Sam asks. Accepts the pancakes, but honestly feels such a mixture of excitement and confusion he couldn’t possibly eat. “Cas, how are you back? I thought, the Empty--”

“Yes,” Cas sighs. “It did take me. But my grace has been failing for months, and the Empty has no hold over humans. Once I expelled the last of my grace--”

“You can just do that?”

Cas smiles at Sam, wide and joyous, then presses his forehead to Deans. Dean doesn’t pull away, doesn’t flinch or scoff or look embarrassed at all. He smiles, too, smaller and more brittle, and he hold Cas’ gaze like Sam isn’t even there.

“I just needed a reminder that good things do happen.”


End file.
